A wave of executions triggers a second round of U.S. sanctions

The punishment was swift. Escorted from their cells in a Shanghai prison, the three shackled men were led to an execution ground outside the city. If tradition was followed, executioners stepped behind the prisoners and fired a single pistol bullet into the base of their skulls. Six days earlier, the three men were convicted of torching a train that had plowed into pro- democracy demonstrators on June 6, killing six people; the court took only a few days to reject their appeals. The procedure was similar in the Shandong province capital of Jinan, where 17 were put to death for "seriously...